If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good melody is worth a million.

I grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s, time of “I am Woman, Hear
me Roar.” Boundaries were being broken
down. Women were entering the
professions in numbers and they could be admitted to almost any college. Even Vassar was admitting men. Girls could
do whatever boys could. It was a great
time for a girl to be growing up, a time of boundless possibilities.

One of the possibilities that feminists saw was the
possibility of raising a different sort of child. The theory was that boys and girls were only different because
of how they were raised. If we raised
them the same, they’d turn out the same.

Fast forward to the late 1980’s when I had my older
son. I joined a playgroup of, mostly,
progressive, Unitarian, vegetarian, environmentally oriented mothers. I was the maverick since my kids ate meat
and sugar and attended Mass, but our environmental orientation and our more
laid back child-raising style helped us to fit in.

We all tried to raise our children in a non-sexist way. Given that we met in parks, and all the kids
were active, most of the little boys and little girls showed up in overalls and
sweatshirts. The kids all learned the
basics, talking, walking, etc. at about the same time – well, except for my
maverick son who rolled over and crawled late and talked and read early. The kids all got played with, snuggled, and
no one ever said to do/don’t whatever because they were a girl/boy.

But then three hit, and that’s when everything seemed to diverge. I remember vividly realizing this at one of
the first three-year-old birthday parties. The kids were all playing, and the moms, released by the independence of
the three year olds from having to pay constant attention to them, were able to
sit at the picnic table and talk. All
of a sudden, I looked at what all the kids were doing. The little boys were mostly running around
the yard playing pirates with swords, capes, plastic guns or gun-formed
fingers. And all the little girls were
sitting next to each other giggling and talking – some in dresses. Hannah Anderson low-key dresses, not frilly
ones from the mall, but they were wearing dresses. Oh, and maverick son? He
looked at the options, then went inside to get a building set, brought it out and
built for the entire party. He skipped
the whole-wheat/apple sauce/carrot cake cupcakes.

I still hadn’t totally learned, though. Fast forward another four years. I did have some dresses for my daughter when
she was little, but she also looked cute in her hand-me-down overalls (with
more girly shirts). But, by the time
she turned three, the overalls were history. She decided she liked dresses, and that’s all she wanted to wear for
years.

Now, I had been overjoyed to be able to wear jeans all the
time when I started staying home with my older son. No more dresses for work! The part-time work that I’ve done since then could all be done without
having to wear a dress – and, of course, teaching aerobics demands this! I was free from dresses, and I
couldn’t understand why she wanted to wear them. But, I’m not all that pushy in general so I
went along (and found some really cute, but not overly frilly dresses).

As time went on, and life got busier, non-sexist child
raising wasn’t uppermost in my mind. The kids got interested in whatever they were interested in. My older son went through an active,
battle-type phase; my daughter went through the “My Little Pony/Disney
Princess” phase. For a while, she
wanted to go through the Barbie aisle at Toys ‘R Us, and he would accompany us
only if I led him through while he had his eyes shut. These things gradually ended, though. Overall, neither of them has been a stereotypical boy or
girl. My daughter is more active than
the stereotypical girl; my son is more artistic than the stereotypical
boy. But, this is a result of the way
we’ve encouraged their interests, not something we’ve pushed on them.

Interestingly
enough, the thing that seems to have lasted the most from those playgroup
enthusiasms is the environmental part. My older son wants to be an entomologist, and my daughter wants to be a
marine biologist. Elder son still
creates – the child who spent the entire party building just finished spending
a few weeks sculpting Christmas presents for everyone (no malls for him!). The child who talked early now writes short
stories. My daughter still likes
dresses, though she says they’re harder to be active in so she doesn’t wear
them that much. She learned how to read
later than the average girl, but now she reads faster and more than the rest of
us. They’ve learned, I think the most
important lessons of feminism – that women and men can both be capable and do
whatever they want, and that everyone is deserving of respect.

Fast forward again to this month. My younger son’s Christmas list consisted of action sets,
Transformers, and Lego kits. His
Christmas presents consisted of the same, plus a few books – which he wanted me
to start reading aloud almost as soon as he opened them. His play with his friends involves
complicated imaginary worlds and rules, and lots of battles. This time around, I don’t even bat an eye –
unless they’re running with sticks. I
know it’s part of being in early elementary school, and not necessarily an
enthusiasm that’s going to last.

Some of our nieces are now in the Pony/Princess stage, and
so, for Christmas, I went to the toy store and “pinked-out.” Even if the mother would rather not have
someone going through the pony stage (and even if the father feels like gagging),
I know that it’s just a phase. The
little ponies will come, and the little ponies will go, and the parents will
wonder how she grew up so fast.

There’s a saying that “When God closes a door, He opens a
window.” One of my “closed doors” the
last few years has been the music program at my church. I’ve played with the choir once or twice a
year, but, unfortunately, the regular instrumental program has been closed all
four times I’ve volunteered, even as a substitute (I do wish the priest would
stop saying “All our ministries are open” because it always reminds me of Inigo
Montoya in The Princess Bride: “You
keep using that word. I do not think it
means what you think it means.” I’ve
been at churches before where ministries are closed – that doesn’t bother me as
much as the inaccuracy in the rhetoric.).

But, a window opened at the local United Church of Christ
last spring. A friend of mine, who is
in the choir there, asked if I could help with a piece that needed a
flutist. So I got involved with their
choir. It’s a much smaller choir than
the one at our church, and much less formal, but no less enthusiastic. I accompanied the choir a few Sundays,
played some Bach and Faure pieces with the piano, and had a great time. They always need singers so my husband and
my son would sing bass, and I would sing either soprano or alto during the
rests when I wasn’t playing flute.

One thing that I’ve had to get used to in the Episcopalian
church is the formality. Now,
Episcopalians do formal worship more beautifully than any other church I’ve
visited, and I really enjoy the worship there. But the formality, of dress and behavior, has been something I’ve had to
get used to (and even our Episcopalian church didn’t seem as formal when we
first joined as it does now). As a
change, I really enjoyed the less formal worship at the United Church of
Christ. Not that their worship was any
less heartfelt – it certainly wasn’t! But tone is different. At one
point, in the children’s part of the service, one of the associate pastors got
down on the floor to do a little puzzle with the children. At the beginning of one service, two of the
pre-teen girls went up to light the candles, one with bare feet. Women were wearing everything from suits to
plain, everyday clothes, and it didn’t matter. It seemed almost more like a big family worshiping.

I also really like the attitude that I saw there towards gay
and lesbian Christians. There has been
so much controversy in the Episcopalian church over the election of a bishop
who is gay, that sometimes the common humanity of our gay and lesbian siblings
in faith seems to get lost. They become
just a subject to be argued over, rather than fellow seekers in Christ (and I
see this attitude from both sides of the argument). The United Church of Christ, or at least this community, sees
them in the latter way – as brothers and sisters serving the Lord.

It would have been very easy to join and get involved there,
and we discussed it for a while. Our
faith, however, is very focused on the Eucharist, and that is not viewed in the
same way in the United Church of Christ. We even considered joining there for volunteering, worship and
fellowship, and attending daily Mass for the Eucharist, but that seemed a bit
too convoluted. I would love to play
there again, though – my heart would sing along with my flute.

I am in the midst of an artistic recovery, and going back like an
archeologist and excavating the play from my past. Art turns on play.
Art is play. Our six year old sometimes mentions the quote from "Sunday
in the Park with George," "Work is what you do for others, leibchin; art
is what you do for yourself." I'm not sure it is meant in a positive
vein in the play - but it's as true a statement as appears anywhere in
the musical.

Which brings me to Pooh. We love the twenty stories written by
A.A.Milne, and read them aloud at special times, like around the fire.
It struck me recently that there is only one artist in the Pooh stories,
and it's the bear himself. He writes poems, he writes songs, he invents
games (Poohsticks). Rabbit and Owl are too concerned with results and
appearances to play and make art. Eyeore is too down-turned to consider
playing and creating. Christopher Robin is the other one who just
plays, and in a way he is the inspiration for the grander art that is
the Pooh stories themselves. And isn't it interesting that the most
memorable and far reaching art of Milne's entire creative life was a set
of stories written for the least serious (but most important) reason of
all? To play with his child?

We have a hard time playing after we grow up. Somehow we have
mistakenly defined growing up as when we get serious and quit playing
around. Most of us stop being freely creative at the same time. We
prevent our creative outflow by talking it down in one way or another.
Even Pooh does this, talking about his poems and songs as "no good."
But he writes them anyway, given even half a chance, and he is always
willing to share them with others regardless of what his inner censor
might be saying. We wouldn't have "Cottleston Pie" if he'd held back.

But the resulting artwork is not the important part. Ideally it would
just be the end result of an exploration, an essay, an "attempt" to see
or think through an interesting possibility. Pooh's art is like that -
seeing where the humming goes. If it's enlightening to others to review
the course of that journey, then the work might be worth something in
it's own right. But mostly art is about the doing - the activity of
painting in order to see, or writing in order to understand, or dancing
in order to feel.

A friend of mine tries to live by the motto "Dance like no one is
watching." Feel. Play. I'm trying to do that, and the paintings have
started again for the first time in over a decade. More importantly,
this time I know what went wrong with all the prior blossomings, and I
also have no confusion about what I want to paint. The latter is really
new to me. I plan to paint like no one's watching. I plan to shush the
voices that criticize the effort (while listening to the voices that
point out what would be even more fun to do next time). And I plan to
show the results of the fun to others, and ponder the value of any
comments in a playful light. Like Poohbear.

Got an inner Pooh you need to let loose? Isn't he (with Christopher
Robin) the happiest creature in the woods? And why is that? Wouldn't
you choose to be the happiest creature? Do you need some quiet to
listen to your honey jars calling you home? If you listened, what would
they tell you? I've been surprised and not surprised at mine. Some of
the revelations are followed immediately with, "Well, YEAH! What were
ya thinkin?!" Things from almost 30 years ago suddenly make sense.
Things I've loved RESTLESSLY for all my life suddenly have something to
DO in my life. There's playing to do. Gotta go.

We'll be heading over to my mother's house this afternoon to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I won't be posting again until probably mid-next week. Have a Blessed Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzah or at least a really good day off!

Here's a painting from the North Carolina Museum of Art. The first time we took my older son to the museum, he was about 2 years old. He later referred to this as the painting with "Baby Jesus having His diaper changed" (Permission given to me by oldest son to tell this story). As the N.C. Museum of Art website says:

In this painting, Stomer uses light as a
visual metaphor for revelation and spiritual illumination and as a
visible manifestation of Christ's divinity. The light emanating from
the Christ Child is the only source of illumination in the work; Stomer
has literally rendered the evangelist John's description of Christ as
"the true light which enlightens everyone" (John 1:9).

I was going to write a post called “The Advent Grinch”
earlier this week, but I was too tired by the time I had time, and, by now, I’m
better. I find Advent the most
stressful time of year, and though it changes slightly from year to year, I’ve
found it’s got certain stages.

Before I get to that, however, I’ll admit that, in
theological terms, it’s not supposed to be like that. Advent is supposed to be a time of waiting and spiritual
preparation. For me, that never
happens. One priest finally was
realistic about this this year. In his
first Advent homily, Father C, at the Catholic church I attend, said that the
Church tells us this is a time of year for waiting – but we know it’s not; it’s
time for shopping so we feel justified in ignoring the Church and going our way (then he continued to talk about what we should be actively doing). I would love for Advent to be a season like
Lent – prayerful and at least a little bit focused, but that would mean moving
the whole present/cards/party/etc. celebration somewhere else.

Every year, I approach Advent thinking that I’ll do things
differently – I won’t get stressed, I won’t be rushed, I won’t blow up at
anyone, and I’ll get everything done ahead of time. And I know it won’t happen that way.

Stage 1: I start out
wanting to do fun things with the kids then realize halfway through the month
that I’m way behind on everything else. Which leads to…

Stage 2: Aack! I’m late! There’s way too much to do. I’ll
never get my present to my Aunt in Canada on time (and what am I going to get
her anyway!). If I don’t get my orders
in to Amazon/the local bookstore/American Girl, I’ll never get them on
time! This is when I get focused,
stressed, and blow up at people. Through this, there’s the underlying guilt that I’m not focusing at all
on other, calmer Christmas activities. Unfortunately, we usually end up putting the tree up during this
stage. We do have Christmas things we
do (baking, reading, going to the Christmas activities at Old Salem), but they
tend to feel squeezed between the shopping.

Stage 3: When I
realize, and regret, all the things I would like to have done, the Christmas
shows we haven’t watched, the things we haven’t baked, the Christmas books we
haven’t read… This happened
yesterday.

Stage 4: Today. Christmas Eve – when we open Christmas
presents. My mother comes from Estonia,
and her family always opened presents on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day was for visiting
relatives. My father, who didn’t like
getting up early in the morning, was all too glad to switch to that
tradition! So this is it – whatever got
done or not, it’s already done. I can
finally relax and enjoy. The Christmas
Eve service at my mother’s Lutheran Church is the second non-Sunday time that
I’ve ended up really focusing on Jesus’s birth (interestingly enough, the other
thing that does that is watching “The Little Drummer Boy” – my favorite
Christmas special). I used to feel
terribly guilty about that – now I just accept it as one of the prices of the
season.

Stage 5: Just started
in recent years – the twelve days of Christmas. All the shopping is done. Presents have been opened and enjoyed. No one has classes or activities until after New Year’s. Even the traffic is lighter because so many
people are out of town. So now
we have time for those things – time to read books, to watch “She Loves Me”
(musical version of “The Shop Around the Corner”), to play new games people got
for Christmas, to do puzzles, to make paper snowflakes, or to tell stories of
favorite past Christmases. We sometimes
keep the tree up for the entire time, but not this year since one of the cats
has taken to climbing it. Whereas
Advent is the most stressful time of year for me, the week after Christmas is
one of my favorite weeks. I can really
focus on my children and husband again. And there’s a lingering glow left from Christmas itself.

The café, called Ninth Street at The Regulator,
opened Tuesday, offering up pastries and coffee during the store's
regular hours, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

As time goes by, the café will broaden its menu to include sandwiches,
soups, chili and pizza. The café will be serving its popular bear claws
as well. "We're thrilled they're back on Ninth Street and they're
partnering with us," said Tom Campbell, one of the bookshop's
co-owners.

Ninth Street Bakery started in 1981 and its retail operation moved into
Ninth Street Café, which closed in 1996 and became Elmo's Diner.

The corner near our neighborhood, just on the edge of town, wasn't very fancy. It just had a few small houses and a few mobile homes. One small house was meticulously kept - I often saw the gentleman outside mowing, trimming, and keeping everything just so. If you were driving through, you'd probably never notice this area, but, after driving by for eight years, it was a familiar sight - small houses with beautiful large trees.

The trees are gone now, and it's just a few acres of mud with earth-moving equipment. They're putting in another strip shopping center. As we were going by today, I remarked to my daughter, "What is it that architects have against trees?" It was meant to be just a snide comment, but I kept thinking about it afterwards.

One reason we bought the house we have, after looking at numerous neighborhoods in both Durham and Orange counties, is because of the trees. There is a covenant in our neighborhood that specifies a limited amount of the lot that could be cleared when it was built. So our neighborhood and our yard are full of trees. It wasn't the builder's decision - other neighborhoods we've seen by the same builder have been clear-cut.

Due to this covenant (and, also due to the fact that we told the builder if they plowed down the huge tulip tree in the back yard, we wouldn't buy the house), we've got beautiful large shade trees in the back, side and front yards. We can find shade in our yard at any time of day in the summer. There are two tall dogwood trees that bloom in at our second-story bedroom window. In the winter, we watch all sorts of birds hopping around in the trees behind the house. I love raking leaves, and I have ample opportunity.

A few years ago, I ended up doing a lot of research on Smart Growth and New Urbanist neighborhoods. They looked interesting (though generally very expensive), but almost all of them seemed to plow down all the trees, and then add little toothpick trees next to the sidewalks when they were done. I couldn't live in a neighborhood like that - at least not for the first fifty years!

You know you have an odd family when your six year old
can identify which Bob Fosse musical a song comes from: “This one’s from All that Jazz...no,
actually it’s from Pippin.” (We did skip over inappropriate parts of the
musicals – which means we watched only selected scenes from All that Jazz and Pippin).

Bob Fosse didn’t do happy musicals – Cabaret has the specter
of Nazi Germany hovering over lost souls in a twilight society; Sweet Charity
gets dumped on yet again; Chicago’s heroines?...okay, main characters compete
for the torrid limelight; All that Jazz shows a hero that, in Ben Vereen’s
words at the end, “This cat was never nobody’s friend.” Pippin is his happiest musical, and it’s
supposed to end with the main character incinerating himself.

I’m not generally a fan of really down, depressing stories
or ones overly drenched in sex. But,
there is something about the artistry of Bob Fosse’s work that makes me love it,
even though I find it hard to explain.

The major part of the beauty of his work is that his choreography is
fantastic – it doesn’t look like anyone else’s. Some of the characteristic moves – the way the shoulders, arms
and hands are held, come from physical problems Fosse himself had and
incorporated into his moves. One of the
places that this is the most striking is in the little piece he choreographed
for Kiss Me Kate - which, I think, was his first choreography for a Hollywood musical. All of the other
dancers have been doing the usual expansive
Broadway/Golden-Age-of-Hollywood-Musicals type dancing, and then he comes out
and drips off of a lamppost. You know
that something totally new is happening.

Kiss Me Kate

All that Jazz and Pippin are my favorites. The main character in All that Jazz is close
to the bottom of a downward spiral. Pippin has war, conspiracy, and a parricide/regicide, along with the
possible immolation at the end. But,
even when the stories are not happy, I still enjoy his artistry. Some of my favorite scenes in Pippin are
with Ben Vereen – the songs “The Right Track” and “Glory” (picture below). He’s one of those actors that you can’t
imagine anyone ever following in that part, and, indeed, Bob Fosse created the
part of the Leading Player for Ben Vereen (That part is often split into two characters
when Pippin is revived).

My very favorite scene in any Fosse musical, however is "Everything Old is New Again" in All that Jazz. Joe Gideon is the main character and is based on Bob Fosse himself. His girlfriend and daughter do a special dance, just for him, to "Everything Old." Ann Reinking is at her leggy best, and it's one of the few sweet numbers in any of his musicals (pictures on a previous post: Moomin Light: "On Broadway"- George Benson).

If you're interested in learning more about Bob Fosse, there's an excellent biography, All his Jazz by Martin Gottfried.

I woke up with a song in my head that I didn’t know that I knew. I could get the melody for the
verse and the chorus, the harmonies, the piano accompaniment, but only two
words: “Dum dum dum so long dum dum dum” etc. So I went downstairs and asked my older children – singing what I could
of it. It turned out to be “Head over
Heels” by the GoGo’s – we got the CD a few months ago, but I’ve only listened
to it a few times, and I hadn’t even consciously picked this song out from the
others on the CD.

We listened to part of the CD during breakfast, and I really
do like the song – nice and energetic. After we finished our homeschooling, I put it on (over and over –
fortunately my children enjoy it too) and started working on a new aerobic
routine inspired by that song (if you want to listen to a bit, here’s a link to
the CD: VH1 Behind the Music: Go-Gos)

I was sick last month, and wasn’t able to teach aerobics at
all, and this month I wasn’t scheduled until next week. So I pretty much
haven’t taught for the last 2 months. I've been enjoying taking other people's classes and didn't feel like I was missing teaching so I started thinking that maybe it was time
to quit. I haven’t had energy to start
working on a new routine, and, after all, I’ve been teaching for twelve
years. Maybe it’s time to be done.

Yesterday, however, I ended up substituting for another
teacher, and I enjoyed it so. That,
plus enjoying coming up with about 10 minutes of aerobic combinations for a new
routine today, shows me that I’m not done yet!

Researchers at North Carolina State University are collaborating to study, then mechanically mimic, the blood-sucking prowess of mosquitoes. Their ultimate goal is to design a “synthetic mosquito” capable of drawing blood painlessly – an especially attractive idea for the millions of diabetics worldwide who must draw blood several times a day for glucose monitoring. Development of a painless
blood collection method could also lessen the trauma
for newborns that require monitoring of a variety of
different constituents, such as bilirubin levels that
signal jaundice.